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How Hurt Locker became Oscar favourite

James Cameron may stride into the tomorrow with all the swagger of a 10-foot-tall Na'vi warrior, but it's far from certain that he'll walk out with Hollywood's most coveted prize. In what could turn out to be a classic cinematic case of David beating Goliath, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has become the odds-on favourite in the Best Picture category.

A scene from 'The Hurt Locker,' up for Best Original Screenplay. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

By Jason AndersonSpecial to the Star

Sat., March 6, 2010

James Cameron may stride into the tomorrow with all the swagger of a 10-foot-tall Na'vi warrior, but it's far from certain that he'll walk out with Hollywood's most coveted prize. In what could turn out to be a classic cinematic case of David beating Goliath, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has become the odds-on favourite in the Best Picture category.

Though the two films have already spent much of awards season battling it out, the directors themselves have been uncommonly gracious to each other. Indeed, the filmmakers – who collaborated on several movies and were briefly married 20 years ago – may be the most civil exes of all time.

Cameron's the undisputed victor when it comes to the box office, Avatar having surpassed The Hurt Locker's $19 million (U.S.) worldwide gross within hours of release. But Bigelow could still get the laurels – and here are six reasons why:

CRITICS AND JURIES

(SOMETIMES) KNOW BEST Critical favour is no guarantee of Oscar success, but The Hurt Locker has received near-unanimous praise, especially compared to Avatar, which arguably had greater appeal to audiences than to the ink-stained wretches in the press.

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According to websites that calculate scores based on movie reviews, The Hurt Locker bests Avatar by 94 to 84 on Metacritic and 97 to 82 on Rotten Tomatoes (both scores are out of 100). Bigelow's movie also topped critics' polls by influential magazines Film Comment and Village Voice, and tied for second in polls by Sight & Sound magazine and the Indiewire website. Avatar barely figured in any of those lists.

And while Avatar beat out The Hurt Locker at the Golden Globes, Bigelow's movie bettered it at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards a few weeks later.

Really, The Hurt Locker has done little but win prizes ever since its debut at the Venice Film Festival in 2008. Other honours include best-of-'09 citations from critics' associations in New York and Los Angeles (it tied for first with Toronto critics) and from Hollywood's own directors, writers and producers guilds. Avatar has dominated the technical and effects awards, but there's no question over which movie has earned more hardware so far.

BIGGER NOT ALWAYS BETTER Big box-office numbers have not guaranteed victory in the category in recent years. In 2007, winner No Country for Old Men was far outgrossed by Juno. Likewise in 2006, Crash was not as popular as Brokeback Mountain (actually, Best Documentary Feature winner March of the Penguins bested both of them).

Another of the 21st century's top-grossing films, The Return of the King, did prevail in 2004, but don't forget that the previous two instalments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were beaten out by A Beautiful Mind and Chicago, respectively.

Of course, former all-time champ Titanic brought Cameron glory in 1998, but Academy members may not tolerate another triumph of commerce over art.

REALITY over FANTASY With the notable exception of The Return of the King, fantasy and science-fiction films have traditionally fared poorly in the Best Picture category. Star Wars and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial were both nominated, but didn't win. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien didn't make the cut at all.

War movies go down a whole lot better with Academy members, who tend to be far older than the adolescents who are the industry's target audience for most of the calendar year. Platoon, The Deer Hunter and The Bridge Over the River Kwai all won for Best Picture. Voters still shocked that Saving Private Ryan was beaten by Shakespeare in Love in 1998 may also want to correct the balance of things.

PUTTING WAR ON THE AGENDA Those liberal Hollywood types have struggled to find a film about current conflicts worth rewarding. They nearly had one in 2004, but Michael Moore withheld Fahrenheit 9/11 from competition in the Documentary Feature category in order to have it air on TV ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

Meanwhile, many Oscar winners tackled the subject of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in dramatic form, but movies like Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah and Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss failed to garner much enthusiasm.

The Hurt Locker and The Messenger (which has earned two major nominations) represent another and perhaps more Oscar-worthy breed of modern war movie. Apolitical in the sense that they do not espouse positions from America's left or right, both focus on the human experience of war in an era when the personal sacrifices of the men and women in the military are often overlooked.

A VICTORY FOR WOMEN The stat that Bigelow is only the fourth woman to be nominated for Best Director is a sad reminder of just how male-dominated the movie business remains when it comes to putting talent behind the camera.

Voters must know that wins for The Hurt Locker (which would also become the first Best Picture winner directed by a woman) and for Bigelow personally might change the situation, as would wins in other categories for three more female-directed efforts: An Education, Bright Star and Julie & Julia.

That a woman has crafted one of American cinema's most perceptive studies of heroism and machismo is an irony that even old-school chauvinists should appreciate.

THE NEW VOTING SYSTEM In a story for The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg explained how the Academy's newly adopted "instant-runoff" voting system is likelier to favour The Hurt Locker – a film that would've ranked near the top on many voters' lists – over the love-it-or-hate- proposition that is Avatar.

Hertzberg notes that while the system doesn't necessarily reward the movie with the most committed supporters, "it does get you a winner that a majority can at least countenance." While Cameron has earned a lot of money for a lot of people, "that doesn't mean that they all long to recrown him king of the world."

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